Vehicle sharing and self-serve vehicle rental services allow consumers to make reservations for station based round trip use of vehicles, particularly in urban environments. These rental vehicles are often located in reserved parking spaces that are identified with permanently mounted signs or markers. Ideally, a user picks up a vehicle from a reserved parking space and returns the vehicle to the same parking space or a similarly marked space nearby. However, as these reserved parking spaces are often found in public parking lots in urban areas, unauthorized vehicles may be parked in the reserved spaces. This can frustrate the user and prevent them from returning the rental vehicle in a timely manner.
Surveillance systems such as video monitoring systems are used to observe an area and provide a live feed or recording of the monitored area. However, these systems are often expensive and can be vulnerable to vandalism. Furthermore, conventional surveillance systems are unable to easily identify whether a vehicle parked in a reserved spot is an authorized rental vehicle or an unauthorized vehicle.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide systems and methods for monitoring a parking space. It is additionally desirable to detect when an authorized or unauthorized vehicle is parked in the parking space and notify the user or rental company. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and the foregoing technical field and background.